“and no one should go broke because they get sick”
It’s floating around FB today, all us conscientious liberals are supposed to change our statuses in a show of unity.
You know what, I don’t think I can do that.
No one should ever die until they’re old and decrepit and ready to go - but we do.
Lightning shouldn’t hit houses.
Hurricanes shouldn’t wipe out cities.
Idiots shouldn’t have children.
If you want to say “There shouldn’t be a thick layer of profiteers sucking on the doctor/patient relationship” I’m all over that one.
I just don’t think we can legislation misfortune out of existence. People WILL still die because they couldn’t get what they needed when they needed it, and people will still go broke because of illness. I’m not going to pretend that I can stop that.
Yeah, but agree with it or not, we really COULD prevent someone from going broke because they got sick. It’s not like they’re saying “no one should ever get sick” or “no one should ever die” or “hurricanes should not happen” so I don’t think your analogy works. It’s more like “no child should ever go hungry” or “no one should be denied an education”…a misfortune we can largely prevent if we choose to.
Only if the illness has a specific beginning and ending. Lots of them don’t.
Like, mental illness.
I don’t want people on the street, either, of course not. I don’t want people shut out or denied access; there is no “us” and “them”.
I just think the conservative complaint about the “nanny state” needs to be heeded.
Why can’t we prevent someone from going broke even if their illness does not have a specific beginning or ending? Unless their ongoing mental illness is that they appear competent enough to not be hospitalized, refuse treatment, and then set fire to their money. And nebulous worries about nanny states is rather different than arguing that going broke because you got sick or dying because you can’t afford treatment is the natural order of things and can no more be prevented than a hurricane…
Well… I know there are plenty of people with mild depression (or whatever) who are fully functional, but I also know people with more serious mental illness who, despite treatment and hospitalizations, are not fully functional. They can’t hold down jobs. So they rely on public assistance, which I don’t begrudge in the least. But they are, basically, “broke”. They have enough money for necessities, which is great, and nothing more. Which means they’re still better off than most of the people on the planet.
I don’t think the government can save us from ourselves, or save us from misery, or make life all rainbows and unicorns. Some people get sick and they never return to wellness.
I guess it’s the difference between intervention in a catastrophe, and ongoing management.
Which is perhaps an interesting tie-in to the popular meme about socialist fire departments. When the building’s burning down, when the hurricane’s hit, when there’s been a car accident - yeah, you fix what you can and you don’t ask questions. We all share in that.
But making life fair for everyone? Giving us all happy outcomes? Pretending that nobody’s life will be ruined because of a medical problem? It’s not gonna work.
Well, I shouldn’t go broke because you got sick either.
But some people should die because we can’t afford health care for them.
Both of these statements seem to assume that health care can be free, and that shifting the cost makes it go away. It can’t and it doesn’t. Hiding costs are a, if not the, major reason for health care inflation. Spending a trillion and a half dollars of someone else’s money to cover about half of the currently uninsured is pouring gas on that fire.
I don’t think we’re so very far apart on what needs to be done. The health care system in this country has been exploited by greedy people and it needs to be fixed.
What’s bothering me is the marketing of the fix.
Marketing it as a “Now everybody will be happy!” solution is a mistake, IMHO. But I realize they’re trying to get away from the cries of “Socialist!” that greet the government’s attempts to regulate capitalism.
How much of that trillion-and-a-half represents the insurance industry? I see them as completely unnecessary to the system. Or rather, I see their profits as unnecessary - the administration probably does help move paper around.
How much productivity does the country gain by improving the health of the currently uninsured?
And how many of the completely uninsured are suffering health problems because someone else is benefiting from their poverty - i.e., they have asthma from breathing fouled air, they lack insurance b/c Wal*Mart doesn’t want to pay for it, they eat only fast-food b/c that’s what’s in their neighborhood, etc.
I don’t think the statement that no one should go broke because they are sick is talking about those who quit their jobs and waste their money - it is talking about going broke because you can’t afford gigantic medical bills. Does that make the statement more acceptable to you?
I think those sick enough are not going to be terribly happy in any case. We can’t do anything about that - we can do something about not adding to the misery by them having to worry about going bankrupt also.
Do you really think it is okay for a hard working person to lose everything he built up and saved for over the years because of an illness?
Your example of lightning in the OP is interesting. We can’t keep lightning from striking, but the old nanny state can mandate lightning rods to keep the lightning from causing a house to catch on fire. Do you have a problem with that? We can’t keep lightning from striking, but we can make the strike not so harmful. We can’t keep people from getting sick, but we can make the illness less financially harmful.
And, in my spirit of charity and good cheer, I propose we take up a collection for Shodan, who must be so near the edge of financial ruin that a small tax increase would make him go broke.
The one and a half trillion is the figure the CBO put on the House bill. This is over and above what we are currently spending. It covers a bit more than half the currently uninsured.
Relatively little. The uninsured are mostly in their twenties (cite), which is generally the healthiest part of life. A substantial proportion (38%) are middle or upper income. There is relatively little evidence that preventive care saves money (cite) and some that it will increase costs (cite).
This is a contentious area, but I will go out on a limb and say that relatively few people in the US have access to McDonald’s but cannot get to a grocery store.
But yes - there is a point at which I (or the taxpayer) could, in theory, afford another fifty bucks in taxes. And that fifty bucks might even save a life here and there. But I do not want to spend it. I accept that this means that someone will die that might otherwise live.
Think of it like traffic laws. We could probably save some lives if we mandated a national, 35 mph speed limit, and passed laws that every passenger car had to be as heavily armored as a Sherman tank. But we don’t do that, because it costs too much (in time and money). We accept, generally without admitting it, that we prefer to spend our time and money elsewhere, and that the increased numbers of deaths is worth the trade-off.
IOW, “some people should die because **we don’t want to drive 35 miles per hour on the freeway.” **
Voyager - that’s what I meant, too - a one-time catastrophic event, as opposed to an ongoing condition that can’t be cured.
Yeah, it IS different - things fall out of the sky and land on all of us, sure. Shit happens. We help each other in those circumstances, generally without hesitation.
Have you ever been to one of those riverboat casinos? They’re really something. A couple hundred of the least attractive human specimens you can imagine, many of them in wheelchairs or on oxygen or otherwise struggling to move around. A bunch of the least-healthy people you can imagine.
And they’re giving their money to machines as fast as they can.
It is a strange sight.
And it’s nobody else’s business, right?
Until they’re spending YOUR money, directly or indirectly.
Yeah, it sucks that people get sick and die. Especially when they didn’t do anything to “deserve” it (or, perhaps, even when they did). Life’s not fair.
I just don’t think we can fix that, not entirely.
I do agree with removing insurance companies from the equation, there’s NO fricking way that some entity should be profiting from the relationship between doctor and patient. Put all of the money WE spend that winds up as THEIR profits back into patient care, and yeah, treat more people. Sure.
But I don’t think we can make life roses for anyone, or everyone.
That limb would break, my friend. Many, MANY poor people in urban areas CAN’T get to a grocery store reliably. Yes, they have bodegas, convenience stores, etc… but these typically have poor selection (especially things they need more of, like produce,) and higher prices. When you have no car and would have to take two trains/subways and a bus to get to a grocery store, or walk a block to get to fast food, guess what wins most of the time?
Of course you’re right, at some point, we’re just going to throw in the towel and say “this is the most effort we can reasonably exert to save lives.” I think anyone on the pro-national healthcare side is suggesting that we should be a nation of Oscar Schindlers asying “This ring could have been one more angioplasty.”
But there is, of course, also a world of difference between your two examples. Retrofitting an entire nation’s autos with steel plating, changing necessary laws, heavily increased road maintenance, etc… Unreasonable for the number of lives that would be saved. $50 (a month? a year?) to provide health insurance for a nation?
Could you give me a cite indicating that when someone says that no one should die because they can’t afford healthcare it means that no one should die period? Since I can’t imagine anyone thinking that? I’ve been to plenty of casinos, in Atlantic City, Vegas, and Indian casinos also (not a riverboat) and I’ve never been run down by a granny in an iron lung. Even if I had been, Medicare is probably paying for it. The number of poor dying people infesting casinos may be roughly equal to the number of Caddy-driving welfare queens.
I’m a lot more worried about kids who might die because they don’t get to the doctor soon enough because the parents are worried about the cost - adults also. Or who choose a cheaper but less effective remedy because of the cost. Or who go to their local quack or faith healer because that guy can heal them quickly and cheaply. People who drink themselves to death - tough luck on them. That would happen with or without insurance.
Very true. My parents lived for a year in the middle of Manhattan, not exactly a poor area. They found it efficient to take the car and drive to the supermarket near where we lived in Queens because they got better food for less money. Whether the higher prices in bodegas are the honest result of higher costs or whether they are a ripoff, they are high - and McDonalds’ prices are the same no matter where you are. I’d also guess the bodegas carry unhealthy packaged food because of the lower cost and more efficient use of space.
